Non-Chalcedonian Heretics: A Contribution to the Dialogue Concerning the "Orthodoxy" of the Non-Chalcedonians
Publisher's Foreward and an Excerpt from the Introduction
by the Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory (Monastery of Gregoriou),
Mount Athos, Greece
The Copts, Jacobites, and
other Non-Chalcedonian heretics, the "Oriental
Orthodox," have been separated from the Orthodox Church
since the earliest Christian centuries. Of late, under the
rubrics of ecumenical politics, the serious theological
differences which separate these heretical confessions from the
Orthodox Church have been dismissed as a matter of
"semantics"; their condemnation by the Fathers and
Synods of the Church has been called into question; and their
piety (something which we do not dispute, since our concern is
the correct confession of the Faith, not personal integrity) has
been cited as a justification for receiving Non-Chalcedonian
believers into Orthodox communion. Indeed, parishes of the Greek
Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, the Orthodox
Church in America, and the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese
routinely commune Copts and other Monophysites. The Patriarchs of
Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria have not only turned a
blind eye to this blasphemy, but have knowingly allowed—and
later denied—instances of concelebration with various Non-Chalcedonian heretics.
Though the Abbots of the
major monasteries on the Holy Mountain have largely capitulated
to the threats of Constantinople against any protests directed at
the Patriarchate's betrayal of the Faith through ecumenism, the
Monastery of Saint Gregory (Gregoriou) did issue a very
significant paper on the theological dialogues between the
Orthodox and Non-Chalcedonian Churches. In an atmosphere of
misrepresentation, denial, and betrayal by the
"official" Orthodox Patriarchates, and in the face of
misinformation designed to obfuscate the Faith-destroying errors
of the Non-Chalcedonian heretics, we have deemed it worthwhile to
print the words of a famous Athonite monastery on this matter,
the words of monks who are, however heavy and burdened their
consciences are because of it, in communion with the very
Patriarchates which are leading our Faithful into communion with
heretics who have been consistently condemned by our Orthodox
Fathers and who, even today, under the guise of politics, hide
their absolute commitment to the heresies of their forefathers.
From the Introduction...
I. Ecclesiological Presuppositions
A. The One, Holy, Catholic,
and Apostolic Church, that is, the Orthodox Church, is "the
pillar and ground of the Truth" (I Timothy 3:15). It is
impossible to confess the Christian Faith truly and fully, save
in the Orthodox Church alone. How, then, can we Orthodox
acknowledge the Truth of the Faith in places other than the
Church?
B. The Church is conscious
of Her identity over time. In dialogues with the
Non-Chalcedonians, She remains aware that She is the Church of
the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical
Synods. The Church's decisions also carry force across time; and
for this reason, the decisions of the Holy Fourth Ecumenical
Synod are of such binding character that the Church can make no
disparate decisions without refuting Herself.
In keeping with this
spirit, the phrase, "We now clearly understand...," has
no place among Orthodox. The classical Patristic dictum,
"Following the Holy Fathers...," is the only one which
expresses how Orthodox understand themselves.
C. We hear it said, today,
that one must not use so called "polemical" theological
nomenclature, that is, the language with which the Holy Fathers
refute and controvert the heretics, but a theological language
that flows forth from the Church's struggle for the preservation
of the unity of the Ecclesiastical Body.
We do not believe that the
present theological engagement of heretics outside the Church
serves the Truth. First, because the language of the Church with
regard to heretics has always been, since Apostolic times,
refutative: "Better, indeed, a laudable war than a peace
which severs one from God" (Saint Gregory the Theologian).
This stand of the Church is actually charitable, for it both
protects the Flock of Christ from heresy and provides heretics
with motives and reasons for returning to the Church.
Let it be noted, in
passing, that the Ecclesiastical Body is comprised of Baptized
Orthodox Christians, and of them alone. The preservation of the
unity of the Ecclesiastical Body means, consequently, the
ensuring of their Orthodoxy and their perseverance to the end
within the bosom of the Church; and this precisely constitutes an
important part of the the Church's pastoral concern. We do not
include within the Ecclesiastical Body, however, heretics outside
the Church. The struggle and the concern of the Church reach even
to them, but the intent of that struggle is their return to the
Church and not the devising by contrived means of peaceful
co-existence with them under some nebulous kind of ecclesiastical
communion.
Translated and Published by the Center for Traditionalist
Orthodox Studies, Etna, CA (1996).
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